


100 Degrees Celsius

by JenTheSweetie, Snapjack



Category: X-Men (Movieverse), X-Men - All Media Types
Genre: Ambiguous/Open Ending, Cheating, Cigars, Consensual Infidelity, Emotional/Psychological Abuse, Explicit Language, F/M, Internalized Misogyny, Love Triangles, Misery, Morally Ambiguous Character, Smoking, Unresolved, crude language
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-09-30
Updated: 2018-09-30
Packaged: 2019-07-20 21:51:29
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 7,514
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16146266
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/JenTheSweetie/pseuds/JenTheSweetie, https://archiveofourown.org/users/Snapjack/pseuds/Snapjack
Summary: He's watching me while I rack up the balls on the pool table. He's always watching me. Logan watching me is a constant. I want to tell him to stop doing it, but I'm afraid he would.





	100 Degrees Celsius

**Author's Note:**

> JenTheSweetie and I wrote this story more than four years ago in a series of emails to each other, only a few months after we first met. It's a measure of how well we've worked together from Day One that, upon reading this story again, I can barely tell which sections are hers, and which are mine. Working with her, my samebrain friend, has been one of the great pleasures of my life. --Jane

100°C

 

He's watching me while I rack up the balls on the pool table. He's always watching me. Logan watching me is a constant. I want to tell him to stop doing it, but I'm afraid he would.

 

***

 

It makes me.... uncomfortable. Not in the way you're thinking. I would have made him stop years ago if it were like that. The kind of uncomfortable he makes me feel is more like... burning. I'm burning, immolating, slowly and in a way that never actually takes away any of me. No matter how long or deep or red my coal flickers, there's never any less of me to burn.

 

If it would take away some of me, it would be a relief.

 

***

 

Sometimes I want to shove him or hurt him or bite him or something. I don't. I know what would happen.

 

***

 

Damn it, I've scratched again. I'm always scratching. I hate it because Scott comes off the barstool and comes over to help me, show me how it's done. He's really doing it to make sure Logan gets a look at him doing it. Mark his territory. He leans over me on the table and guides my hands and I can feel his chin in my hair as he looks up at Logan, leans on me too hard. He guides my hands and I scratch again, even worse than before, and he says, "See? That's how it's done," and walks away. He didn't even notice that I scratched. It wasn't about that.

 

***

 

This bar is too hot. Why do we always come here? I hate it here.

 

***

 

"Behind you," Logan murmurs when he comes around to get the chalk while I'm lining up a shot. He's always murmuring to me, always talking two or three tones lower than anyone else. It makes what he has to say a secret, makes it wrong. There's no reason for him to do that. I'm going to make him stop, I'll ask him to stop being quieter to me. Anything he wants to say to me he can say in a normal tone of voice that Scott and everyone else can hear.

 

I don't want him to stop.

 

***

 

I've never read Logan's mind. I don't want to.

 

***

 

"You're bearing down too hard," he says when I scratch for the fourth time, and that does it. I set the cue down too hard and go into the women's room. It's too much, it's too hot, and Scott has started a loud argument about the Tour de France and I hate it when he talks about the cycling because he always starts asking everyone if they even know who won before Lance Armstrong. I want to tell him it doesn't matter, they're watching it now, and why wouldn't you be happy about more people watching the sport with you? I'm too hot. I pull my shirt out from my pants and fan myself, yank paper towels off and dab at the hot, wet space under my breasts. My bra is hurting me, it's red stripes across my ribcage and I wish I could take it off but Logan would look at me and Scott would yell. Yell more.

 

I don't even hear him come in.

 

***

 

He smells. I should tell him that and maybe he'd leave. He'd stop. Scott always smells so good, like Gaultier and Tide. Sometimes the sea. Logan smells like a predator. He smells of smoke and leather and sweat and fur. He smells so strong that it fills up the whole space, and he's so quiet behind me, just a breath around the cigar he's always got. It's not lit but it doesn't need to be.

 

I'm burning.

 

***

 

"This is the women's restroom," I tell him. My voice doesn't wobble. It doesn't. I have a very clear and steady voice.

 

Clear.

 

Clear as a bell.

 

On a clear day, you can see right through me.

 

***

 

I turn around and look up at him. For me, this is being brave.

 

***

 

He looks down at me. We've always just stood and looked at each other. For nine years, we've stood and looked at each other. For nine years, he's burned me like this. I thought it would get easier with time, but instead it only made it harder to move, we're locked into this dance and it never ends. I wish it could end. I feel like the girl in The Red Shoes, the one who had to dance in burning iron until she dropped dead from exhaustion. I want to be dead. It would be easier than being here burning.

 

***

 

"Either kiss me or get out," I finally say, and my voice is mean and brittle. I've finally become the mean, brittle woman with bad secrets that he wants me to be. He wants to steal me away from Scott, he wants to make me into a bad woman. Fine. I'll be a bad woman and he will have won a prize that means nothing. I will burn the village to the ground and salt the earth before handing it over to him. See how he likes being burned.

 

***

 

He doesn't move. Instead, he shifts his cigar thoughtfully to the other side of his mouth.

 

This man never does what I want him to do.

 

***

 

"Jean, read my mind."

 

I don't want to read Logan's mind.

 

He steps closer. "Jean. Read my mind."

 

"I don't want to read your mind."

 

He is somehow closer and I don't understand how he can be this close without even touching me. I am surrounded by him and he's not even touching me. He smells of smoke, he reeks and I am standing in the middle of a brush fire. I don't even know who lit it.

 

"Yeah, you do."

 

 

***

 

Yeah. I do.

 

***

 

 

Logan's mind is all images and scents and touch. No sounds or words at all. So quiet. And yet my head is full of sounds, all I hear is the fire roaring and the whoosh of rabbits deer furred things running past at top speed because the fire is coming and I see

 

me on the stairs the first day Scott grabbed me by the soft part above my elbow and it hurt

 

me standing on top of a burning car with a bright sword in my hand and red painted across my face

 

me looking scared in the school hallway. why do I always look so scared? I never used to look so scared

 

me kneeling in the dirt over a big dead carcass of a lion. my arms are all the way into it and up to my elbows in blood and I am looking up at him and I am **grinning**

 

me pushing away my plate at lunch and looking out the window

 

me laughing, in the woods, we're sharing a piece of meat and I'm growling at him and pulling it away and we're laughing

 

me sitting in the front row at graduation and I'm arranging my robe so it covers my legs and Scott nods approvingly

 

me and Logan and we're outside in the rain and I am naked and he is looking at me--

 

***

 

"Half of these are lies," I tell him.

 

"No," he says. "Half of those are reality. The other half are the truth."

 

 

***

 

I'll tell myself, later, that I was heading for the door.  It will make me feel better: I was leaving.  He stopped me.  He got in my way.  He pushed, he made me -

 

It will be the first of more lies than I will be able to count.

 

***

 

Before I know it I am up against the bathroom wall. 

 

No: it is not before I know it.  That's another lie.  I'm already getting good at forgetting the truth.

 

What really happens is that we meet in the middle, a step forward each.  He takes his cigar out of his mouth, slowly, and suddenly I realize: I am the wild animal now.  He is moving carefully, afraid to spook me.  Afraid I'll run off.  He lights it and sucks in a breath, holding it in his mouth.

 

I pluck the cigar from his mouth before he can put it out on his hand, because I hate it when he does that, I hate it.  When he does it, I feel as if I am burning with him, but my skin doesn't sew itself back together, doesn't turn red-pink-shiny right away like his.  I am always raw and bleeding around Logan. 

 

I wrap my lips around the cigar and suck.  It is not meant to be sexy; it is meant to be preemptive.  I want the taste of it my mouth.  I try not to cough, and my mouth is dry as ash.  I wonder if he's thinking about laughing at me as I drop the cigar on the floor and crush it with my heel.  I grind it with my heel, the ash dirtying my boot, and I know he will be angry, angry at the waste, and I relish it. 

 

He waits until I'm done, until the smoke is gone, and then he raises a hand and tilts my chin up, stares into my eyes.  It's not tender.  It's searching.  He is reading my mind in a way I've never been able to read his, and I don't think he likes what he sees. 

 

I think about screaming. I can undo it all, right now; I can raise my voice and he will step back and no one will ever know the difference. 

 

Instead I kiss him.

 

***

 

He tastes, predictably, like cigars. 

 

My stomach rolls over, and I want to gag, but his tongue is my mouth and I could not stop kissing him if the room was burning down around us.  Maybe it is.  I have no way of knowing for sure.

 

This is when I end up against the wall, his hands on my shoulders, pushing me back, holding me in place.  The bathroom wall is hard under my back and I know it's dirty, I can imagine the grime sticking to the back of my shirt.  Scott would never kiss me in a bathroom.  I want to take a shower. 

 

"Fuck," he says against my mouth, and I want to swallow the word whole, I want to hold it in my throat, I want to choke on it.  "Jean - "

 

I don't want to hear it. His hands are at my throat; I imagine, for a moment, his claws coming out as he comes, piercing me, draining me, my blood dripping down the drain, hot and bright. 

 

It's metaphorical. Mostly.

 

***

 

No matter how much I've imagined this - and I have; if I say I haven't, I am lying again, because I am a liar now - it was never like this.  It was never against a bathroom wall, my hands digging into his shoulders, his hips pressing against mine, his cock pressing against me through his jeans, Scott playing pool on the other side of the wall.  I can't remember what I've imagined before, because right now there is only this, there is only ever this.

 

In the corner of my mind, I feel Storm think: Jean?

 

She saw me leave; she saw Logan follow.  She's wondering and she's worried and she won't say a word to Scott, because she's smarter than that, but still. 

 

I push against his shoulders, and he growls, he growls and shoves me up against the wall and as my head smacks the graffiti’d cement I remember with sudden, terrifying clarity that Logan is the Wolverine, that Logan could hold me in place and do whatever he wants with me, and I realize with equal, gasping horror that there is nothing he could do that I don't want from him.

 

"Storm's coming," I say against his lips, and he freezes, his body still in place, slotting over mine like we have always fit together that way, one of his hands tangled in my hair.

 

"So you want me to stop?"

 

***

 

I don't want him to stop.

 

***

 

He stops anyway, pulling away slowly, his eyes on me, his hands trailing down my shoulders, my arms, my hands.  I wonder if this is my life's great love story: one sweaty kiss in the bathroom at a bar, tasting like cigars and whiskey and fear.  His cock is hard in his jeans. _I turn you on, don't I,_ Scott will whisper later as he fucks me, thinking my wetness is for him, and I will moan and close my eyes and imagine lips that taste like ash. 

 

Already, it's over.

 

"After you," he says, and I leave the bathroom faster, my hand over my mouth, choking on smoke.

 

***

 

When we all arrive home, two games later - I watch, leaning against the wall, as Logan loses to Scott twice, smugly, and never looks my way - I reach out for the Professor in my mind, because I cannot hide anything from him and I have never wanted to try. 

 

Oh, Jean, he thinks, so sadly, and I press my fist to my lips so I don't scream.

 

***

 

That night, I figure if I don't scream then, I never will again. This is as bad as it will get, I repeat to myself again and again, as Scott frantically bounces me against the mattress. (He's really fucking Logan. Not me. He only thinks he's fucking me, but I'm just the battered membrane between his ego and Logan's. I barely even enter the picture, transparent plastic sheeting that I am.)

 

Old riddle. What happens when an unstoppable force meets an immoveable object? It's supposed to be solved because the two can't exist in the same universe. One or the other must be real. I used to believe that. But then I was crushed between the two, and now the riddle isn't funny to me any more.

 

This is surely as bad as I can feel, alone in a room even though someone is penetrating me. This is surely as bad as it gets.

 

It's not even close to as bad as it gets.

 

Because the next day, Logan is still there.

 

****

 

I don't know why I'd thought he'd go. He has a full class schedule to teach. Responsibilities to his students. He's on the steering committee for the school and all of our emergency response teams. And Logan is responsible; he doesn't make many commitments, but he keeps the ones he makes. I don't know why I thought he'd just get on his bike and ride off into the sunrise the next morning, leave me longing here like he's probably left hundreds of other women longing in Canada and Europe and Japan and everywhere else.

 

Just wishful thinking, I guess.

 

Because now it's a hundred thousand times worse.

 

He's stopped touching me. Stopped looking at me the way he looks at me. Stopped everything that smoked and scorched, leaving me with nothing except the knowledge, deep down in the groundwater of my intuition where denial can't seep, that I am being teased. He hasn't given up, not at all.

 

He's waiting for me.

 

****

 

Here's how Logan's teasing works: He actually smiles at me, the bastard. Says "Good morning, Jean," all lighthearted, like we're fucking professionals or some such bullshit. Offers to carry heavy things, is chipper about classes and students and detention and lunch duty.

 

Whatever Logan and I have been, it's never been professional.

 

And watching Logan be chipper is giving me a migraine.

 

"Stop it," I finally mutter to him one day when he's really on my nerves. It's a sunny day. We're on the stairs in a butter-yellow patch of chipper fucking pretty fucking wholesome fucking sunlight. I wish it would hail. I should ask Storm.

 

"Stop what?" Logan says.

 

"You know what. Stop this act. I don't like this any more than you, but we are never going to happen."

 

And he takes his cigar from his mouth, and there's that feral glint. I want to cry with relief it's so good to see it instead of this Sunday School pantomine that he's been. This wolf in sheep's nightclothes. He leans in. "Now, there's where you're wrong, girlie."

 

"Where," I say flatly, and even my flattest doesn't scare him. He pops the cigar back in, talks around it as he climbs the stairs, doesn't even look back to see me, leaves his voice echoing around me like smoke.

 

"It's gonna happen. Just you wait. It's gonna happen."

 

***

 

I believe him, and I'm afraid.

 

I tell myself I'm afraid of Logan.  I'm afraid because he is threatening me; he is saying that he will take what he wants. He will take me.  Or maybe I'm afraid of Scott, of what he'll do when he finds out.  Scott doesn't react well to people touching his stuff.

 

That's not what it is, though.  I'm afraid of myself.  I'm afraid of that blood-drenched woman in Logan's mind, of that cigar-sucking woman in the bar bathroom.  I'm afraid of what I know I will become when I prove him right.

 

***

 

I don't even know how it starts, but soon Scott and I are fighting in that horrible, quiet way we've perfected over the years.  I wish, sometimes, that he would yell at me or slam doors or tell me what the fuck I did wrong this time in simple, matter-of-fact language, but instead he sighs and shakes his head and looks disappointed, like I have failed him in some vast, unexplainable, inherently womanly way.  "Don't worry about it, Jean," he says, guaranteeing that I will worry about it until he finally decides I have served my time and am allowed back in his good graces.

 

I don't feel like waiting around for him to forgive me, so I leave our room, smiling tightly at a few of the kids who know they're supposed to be in bed but aren't, and burst into the humid air of the backyard, the cool of the air conditioning evaporating off my skin instantly. 

 

I smell him before I see him: cigar smoke and sweat, wafting through the wet air.  He doesn't turn around, but I know that he can smell me, sense me.  He is more animal than man, I think nastily, compared to him I am sophisticated and civilized and –

 

\- and domesticated.

 

***

 

I take a step toward him.

 

"House a little too crowded?" Logan says, a laugh in his voice.  He is mocking me already, I can tell.

 

"Isn't it always?" I reply.

 

He shrugs. "Depends on what kind of space you need."  He glances over his shoulder.  "You can come closer.  I don't bite."  He turns away, and I can hear the grin in his voice as he says, "Usually."

 

I take another step closer.

 

***

 

There is an interminable silence.  The earth goes around the sun.  Scott sleeps in our bed.  I stand in the backyard, staring at the back of Logan's head, thinking about my back against a dirty bathroom wall. 

 

Logan smokes his cigar, and waits.

 

***

 

"You ever think you just wanna blow this joint?" he says finally.

 

"No," I say, because I don't.  This is my home.  I'm happy here; I belong here.  "Do you?"

 

"Every fuckin' day," he says.

 

"So why don't you?" I say, a little harsher than I mean to.

 

He snorts.  "You don't know already, I ain't sayin'." 

 

I wonder if any of the kids are watching us through their windows, noses pressed against the cool glass.  _Jean and Logan are outsiiiide,_ I hear them whispering.  If there's something I've learned from all these years teaching, it's that kids see a lot more than we give them credit for. 

 

Logan takes his cigar out of his mouth and puts it out on his hand.  He doesn't flinch, but I do.  I can feel it searing me, and he can tell. 

 

He doesn't smile as he walks toward me; I'm expecting a feral grin, a glint in his eyes, more of his cheerfulness laced with hunger, but he looks serious, grave, and I swallow hard and fight the urge to press myself up against the wall, melt into the scenery, hide from him. 

 

He takes my wrist in his hand, two of his fingertips over the delicate skin over my veins.  I consider pulling away, but he's holding on too tight; if I fought him, I would snap in half like a twig.  I am brittle and cracking already.

 

"If you ever change your mind, want to get out of here?" he says.  "You know where to find me."

 

By the time I remember to breathe, the door has closed behind him.

 

***

 

That night, I dream of a hot room, bite marks on my thighs, choking on cigar smoke, and Logan, around me, above me, inside me.  I wake up drenched with sweat and know: _It's gonna happen.  Just you wait._

 

 

The evening that pushes me over the edge isn't even about Scott. It's the night of the talent show. Why do we even have a talent show. This whole school's a talent show, every day's a talent show, but every spring, we still jam ourselves into the cramped metal seats of the auditorium and grimace through yet another three hours of painful pre-teen self-indulgence. One year, we had no less than three eleven-year-old girls howl Christina Aguilera at us off-key over a non-karaoke track of "Beautiful". In all three cases, they broke down by the end of the song, big fat tears rolling down red pre-teen faces, overcome by their own interior drama. One of them insisted on starting over from the top when her disc skipped. Three times. After that, we initiated signup sheets and disallowed duplicate performances. Somehow, this hasn't made things any better. This year, all the girls are doing choreographed dances to One Direction and Justin Bieber. The music rooms and rehearsal spaces have been booked for weeks, but it never shows in the performances. There is always one girl in the front who can dance, staring ahead with grim determination. All the others follow her lead a half-step behind the beat, staring at her feet. Their hair is perfect.

 

The boys always do demonstrations of their powers. The goal is always to light something on fire and force Bobby, who is standing by with the fire extinguisher, to use it. It sounds exciting, but after the thirteenth giggling bunch of sixth grade boys climbs up on the stage, the excitement wears off. Bobby doesn't even get out of his chair to use the extinguisher any more. He just points and shoots, and on comes the next group of boys.

 

Dance. Dance. Fire. Dance. Excruciating a capella version of "If I Was A Boy". I sneak a peek at the armrests of the chair next to mine, where Storm is sitting, perfectly composed. Logan sat in that chair last year for the talent show. I can still see the claw marks.

 

It's almost time for the intermission, where they release the audience from their seats for a carefully supervised bathroom break. This time last year, we didn't have monitors and half the faculty made a run for it.

 

We don't have to worry about the parents returning. This is a school for mutants. Most of the parents aren't here.

 

Storm elbows me sharply, and I realize the intermission has been announced and they're waiting for me to pull the curtains closed. It's my job. I go up and haul on the heavy, slick rope, getting a faceful of dusty curtain smell. It is insufferably hot backstage. Three girls are fighting over who gets to work the glitter machine. A boy is methodically flipping every switch on the dead light panel to the "On" position, then switching them back off in the same order. Bobby is drinking out of a Country Time lemonade bottle with a dead moth stuck to the bottom of it. I feel a migraine coming on.

 

And Logan brushes past me on his way out to the back entrance, doubtless to catch a smoke before the next half begins, and the words come out of my mouth before I can stop them.

 

No. That's a lie. We can always stop words. No one has ever not been able to stop herself from saying something hurtful, or wrong, or mean. I have been successfully stopping myself from saying things that were bad for years. Scott doesn't like it when I swear, so I stopped. He doesn't like it when I say certain other words, so I stopped them too. He thought the words "pussy" and "cunt" were "crude" and "disrespectful to women", and so I stopped using them, even though the way I was saying them didn't feel disrespectful to me. But Scott liked it better when I used the real terms for things, so I did, even though it made my language stilted and self-conscious in bed. Even though it made me stop coming. He didn't notice when I stopped saying "I love you."

 

 

I could have stopped these words, too. I chose not to.

 

"Get me out of here."

 

Logan doesn't need to be told twice. He grabs me by my jacket sleeve and hauls me with him, not even breaking stride, out the delivery door. I hear it slam behind us and Logan keeps moving, dragging me behind him, fast. It's dusk and the white chalk driveway glows in the twilight. Fat purple jo-pie weeds hang their heads over the driveway; fireflies are just lighting up. The insects sing a summer chorus, and my ears are ringing with the sudden absence of voices. I'm stumbling behind Logan, running behind him like Lot's wife. Terrified that someone will see me leaving, terrified to turn around. If I turn around, I will turn into a pillar of white salt. Logan's hand around my wrist is brown, brown as the earth. When did I become so pale, such a frightened pale indoor animal? I don't remember. I don't remember anything from before I was this way.

 

"Get on."

 

Logan's motorcycle. Of course. I throw a leg over it, get behind him, press up to him. He's wearing leather. He smells like an animal. I press my face in between his shoulder blades and pull great deep breaths of it, making myself high on it. The forest is buzzing around me, the bike is making my bones vibrate against each other like so many tuning forks, making my body sing like a locust on a tree, adding its rattle and hum to the chorus of sex and life crashing all around it. Logan is asking me a question, but I can't hear.

 

"What?" I yell over his shoulder.

 

"I said, am I getting you out of here for tonight, or for good?"

 

It's too big a decision for me to make right now. Logan should know better than to ask me to make a decision right now. Every boy knows you never ask a woman to engage her higher brain functions when she's feeling like a locust on a tree. When she's ready to make a bad decision. I want to tell him so, but instead I just tell him, "Let's say just tonight, just for now."

 

Logan nods and makes a turn off the main route, scooting through the trees on a narrow one-lane road. I want to tell him, no, go farther, take me at least to the state line. But my words die as the trees grow darker, hemming us in, as the bike gears down, getting quieter and quieter until we're just put-putting through a carpet of needles, up a bank where he pulls to a stop and puts his foot down, kills the engine. Sucks thoughtfully on his cigar.

 

"This do?"

 

I look. It's a little lake, surrounded by tall firs. In the dark evening light, it reflects a purple circle of sky. From the glass-smooth water, a cloud of evaporation lifts like a banner of smoke into the cooler evening air.  It is alone. It is perfect.

 

"This'll do," I say.

 

I swing off the seat of the motorcycle and step onto the dirt, my legs shaking like I have run all the way here.  I suck in cool lungfuls of air, the sounds and smells and heavy air of the talent show shaking off me like drops of water from a dog.  I think about Scott back in Westchester, listening to a group of sixth graders warble along to Semi-Charmed Life, and I want to laugh. 

 

I am - free is not quite right, because Logan is watching me, and I am still burning.  But I am away.

 

I kick off my shoes in the dirt and go to the edge of the lake.  I want to wade out and see how far I can get until I am underwater.  Maybe in the water, the fire that Logan has set inside me will crackle and hiss and turn to smoke.  I think of rocks, but my skirt doesn't have any pockets.

 

***

 

"Going swimming?" Logan says, and I startle. 

 

"Maybe," I say, and dig my toes into the sand.  I glance over my shoulder at Logan.  His arms are crossed over his chest and he is watching me, just like he always is.  I wonder what he thinks is going to happen.  I wonder what I think is going to happen.

 

I step into the water up to my ankles and resist the chill that goes up my spine.  The water laps and recedes, laps and recedes, but it's not going anywhere.  The tide can't reach it.

 

***

 

"Are you planning to kiss me?" I ask, annoyed.

 

"Yes," Logan says.

 

"So what are you waiting for?" 

 

He steps up closer to me. I can almost feel him: his body, his breath, his heat.  I think about jumping forward into the water.  I feel like I could swim forever. 

 

Logan places a hand on my waist, slots himself up against my back.  I can feel the cool metal of the zipper on his leather jacket against the nape of my neck.  He waits; our breaths sync up.  He is being cautious, and gentle, and I realize, suddenly, that he is afraid. His heart races against my spine. He has never been nervous before about kissing me, about snatching me from Scott's grasp, and now here we are, freer and safer than we have ever been, and Logan is afraid. 

 

Logan has never been afraid of Scott; Logan has never been afraid of getting caught.  Of course he wasn't.  But it is strikingly clear now that Logan is afraid of me.  I want to laugh, but I know it will frighten him even more.  I tilt my head to the side, baring my neck: a challenge.  Logan lets out a deep breath in my ear, then leans down and bites the top of my shoulder.

 

Everything seems to happen fast after that. 

 

I twist in Logan's arms and capture his mouth.  His hands grip my waist, his tongue forces its way into my mouth, his cock is already swelling against my stomach.  I thread my hands into his hair, too-long and dirty, and inhale his sweaty-smoky scent. The taste of cigar on his lips doesn't make me sick this time; it makes me wet, aching, like he has been teasing me for hours.  I bite his earlobe.

 

"I want you to fuck me."

 

He groans at that and pushes me away, and I stumble at the edge of the lake, water splashing at my calves, my mouth open in shock, but he just shrugs off his leather jacket and lays it out on the ground in the sand.  How courteous, I think, and cover my mouth with my hand to stifle a laugh.

 

"Something funny?" he growls, grabbing my wrist.

 

"No," I say, because his pupils are dilated and there is a drop of sweat at his temples and he is going to fuck me, he is going to fuck me right here on the ground like a fucking animal, and there is nothing funny about it at all.

 

"Good," he says, and in one sweeping motion he lifts me off my feet, princess-style, and drops to his knees.  He sets me down on his jacket and rests his hands on either side of my head, looking down at me intently.  I hook my knee around his denim-clad thigh, pulling him closer, his cock straining against his jeans, and he kisses me more softly than he has before, almost tenderly - as tender as Logan will get, I imagine - and he keeps his eyes wide open, looking at me, looking at me.

 

I strip my shirt off and throw it to the side, and he runs a hand up my side and cups my breast unhesitatingly.  He rubs his thumb over my hardening nipple through my bra and grinds his hips into mine, and it has been so long since I've come with anything that wasn't battery-operated that I feel like I could from this alone.  I pull his shirt off over his head and scratch my nails down his back, imagining the red marks fading immediately, and he pushes the lace of my bra aside and sucks one taut nipple into his mouth.  I arch up, gasping, his sandpaper skin scratching my chest. 

 

"Now," I say as he licks a wet stripe from my nipple to my neck.  "Now, Logan."

 

"Fuck," he says, and he is pulling off his belt and hiking up my skirt, and I reach down and grip his thick cock in my hand as he pushes his jeans down to his thighs. There are rocks beneath my back and I can hear the wind rustling the trees and Logan holds himself up with one hand, palm-down next to my cheek, and slips the other between my legs. 

 

His fingers dip inside me and I am dripping, I am writhing, and as he brushes his thumb across my clit I cry out, because I am on fire, I am burning down around him, his fingers thrusting in and out and his thumb circling and I am coming undone so fast, and he is looking at me with wide eyes, and I gasp, "Now."

 

"Do you have any - " he starts, and I cut him off, "No, it's fine, now," and he doesn't need to be told twice, he pushes my panties aside and lines himself up at my entrance.  I grab his ass and pull, and he slides into me deep and fast and I choke on a million things I want to say and never will.  He fucks me against the ground, his hips snapping against mine, and I gasp mindlessly, thoughtlessly, and he reaches up and takes my nipple between his wet thumb and finger and twists, and I spill over the edge with a scream that is lost among the trees and the lake and the stars. 

 

He speeds up, my cries pushing him forward, and before long he moans, thrusting one last time, and he pulses inside me.  He lays on top of me, his cheek against mine, sweat and sex mingling between us, and I think, I should feel guilty, and I don't at all. 

 

***

 

"We should get back," he says, pulling out and tucking himself back into his boxers. He's still hard, and I narrow my eyes at him until he chuckles and says, "Healing factor.  No refractory period.  Don't worry about it."

 

My mouth goes dry.  I'm not worried about it.

 

He's right, though. We should get back.  I stand up, my thighs already sore, and look at the lake. The moon is only a sliver tonight, but the light it reflects is bright, and the lake is calm and smooth like crystal. 

 

I want to break it. 

 

I push my skirt and underwear off and unhook my bra before Logan can say more than, "What the fu - " and I run into the lake, naked, laughing.  It is colder than I thought it would be against my hot skin, against the wetness between my thighs, and I dive in, goosebumps popping up along my arms and legs. 

 

I pop out of the water and grin at Logan, who is staring at me with one eyebrow raised.  "You coming in?" I challenge.

 

"Goddamn it," he mutters.

 

* * *

 

 

I sink farther into the water, watching Logan kick off his boots, just my eyes and ears poking above the surface, like a hippo. It’s not very deep here; I could touch the bottom, but I tread water anyway to keep the cold circulating over my skin, to soothe the ember threatening to burn me from the inside out. They keep nuclear reactors from melting this way. I learned that in school.

 

I wonder if maybe this pond isn’t deep enough for a nuclear reactor.

 

He’s staring at me while he yanks his belt from the loops, and a dark grin tugs at the corner of his mouth.

 

“What’re you staring at, girlie?” he says across the water to me.

 

“You,” I answer, lifting my chin boldly.

 

“Right,” he says, and with his jeans still on, charges into the water, kicking up enormous plumes of water and lunging for me, catching me at the waist and making me scream as I go under. I come up spitting and laughing, and he comes up blinking water out of his eyes, his hair slicked-back and curling behind his ears. We’re both treading water now, and I feel the occasional brush of his hands against me, dark fish seeing if I am something good to eat. Logan’s a strong swimmer, but he’s solid muscle to my soft flesh, and his resting point is even lower in the water than mine--just eyes above the surface, like a crocodile. I wonder if my scraps of breast and buttock, the scanty white bits of me that would barely make a meal for a starving scavenger, could ever be enough to satisfy a beast like Logan. Scott says I’m fine, Scott says I’m beautiful over and over and over again, and yet Scott never makes me feel like a paper lantern curling into ash around a too-large flame. Only Logan makes me feel like that, like I’m just a vessel for a power my skin can’t contain. Scott’s constant reassurances just make me feel breakable. Logan makes me feel like I actually might break open.

 

I wonder what would come out of me if I did.

 

We swim in silence, enjoying the purple evening air, the water warming to our skins, the fireflies nearing the treetops. Logan floats on his back and spits a plume of water into the air, his soaked jeans tugging low on his hips, their frayed cuffs trailing long white threads into the water. I rest a hand over his ankle and feel it sink into the water, the rest of the man coming closer as he rights himself, comes closer, puts his hands on my waist.  He’s standing now.

 

I’m not.

 

As he comes nearer, his chest touching my cheek, I find myself turning my head away,  gripped by a childish desire not to look him in the eye. I worry that if I do, he’ll tell me something grownup, something sensible, something like, “Jean, we have to go home.”

 

Jean, it’s a school night.

 

Jean, it’s past your bedtime.

 

Jean, be reasonable.

 

He doesn’t do any of those things. Instead, he bends down to brush his lips against my cheek, his hands light on my waist, barely anchoring me to him. “Jean.”

 

He sounds sad, wistful. I wonder if I made him sound that way.

 

“Jean.” His breath travels over my ear. I still can’t look at him.

 

“Don’t make me go back,” I whisper, and I sound pathetic, even to myself. A child, begging to be allowed to stay up late, just this once.

 

He stills, and his grasp on my waist grows firm, all his muscles tense. “I thought you said this was just for one night.”

 

It was. It is. It has to be.

 

I don’t want it to be.

 

“It can’t be anything else,” I say, and if my voice wobbles when I say it, well, that’s just something Logan’s gonna have to get used to if he wants to fuck women who are in the middle of a nuclear meltdown. But Logan grabs me by the chin and forces me to look in his eyes, and when he does his voice is a growl, and all of him is animal, and all of him is _mad_.

 

I guess I was wrong. Logan doesn’t care if I break.

 

In a way, I guess that’s kind of a relief.

 

 “Jean, if that’s what you really want you better tell me now.”

 

“Why?” I say, and I’m really curious. Why does it matter, now or later, ten at night or two in the morning? Why does it really matter if we lace our shoes nicely or come back to school soaking wet? What does it really matter if we ever put our clothes on again, or leave this pond at all?

 

God, Storm would have me committed if she heard that I was thinking like this.

 

“Because,” Logan says. “If you tell me you don’t want to go back to him, we’ll be at the border by dawn.”

 

I can’t help it. I bark with laughter before I can even help myself. I sound hysterical, but God, he is just so _serious_ about this, and the idea is so ludicrous, and **_fuck_** but it has been a long day, and there was a talent show at the end of it. I wonder if this is the talent portion for Logan. Light a girl on fire, give her one **_transcendent_** drilling by the edge of a postcard-pretty lake, then give her a choice: run away with me, or go back to your repressed little schoolmarm life. I wonder how many have made that choice before me. Logan is pretty much immortal, after all.

 

“Is that your solution to everything? Run away to _Canada_?” I say to him between hiccups. He’s glaring down at me, he’s furious, I can tell, but it’s _funny_ , I can’t help that I find it funny, that I’m crazy. He’d be crazy too, if he were me. If he’d been sleeping with Scott for the past six years.  God, what have I been doing? I’ve been sleeping with _Scott_. Suddenly, the hysteria isn’t funny anymore, it’s real, and I am gasping for breath as I thrash in the water, as I double over in pain, and the wailing that I can hear coming out of me is like a child keening, and Logan has me around the waist, and he’s saying my name over and over again, frightened. “Jean, Jean, Jean. Woah, easy there.”

 

But I cannot take it easy, it’s finally happened. The fire has finally engulfed the building, and the roof has collapsed, and now I am just a chimney, an avenue, an empty conduit for flame. I can’t stop crying like I can’t stop laughing, but nothing is funny. I feel like I’m coming apart. I’m only vaguely aware of Logan scooping me up in his arms and wading towards shore. Once there, he deposits me on the ground and goes over to his motorcycle. He comes back with a cigar and a Navajo blanket from the compartment under the seat. Kneels down next to me, wraps me in the blanket, tucking it under all the parts of me that touch the ground. Then he rubs my back in circles through the coarse, heavy blanket, the rough circles you use to stir life into any new wet animal that doesn’t know how to breathe on its own yet. When I’ve calmed down, he sits down next to me on the ground, lights his cigar, pitches the match. I listen for a hiss but there isn’t one; the match disappears silently into the stones at the edge of the pond. The orange-red end of Logan’s cigar is bright against the dark denim blue-green of the night sky, the shadowy pines. His jeans are soaking, black with water, and I touch them tentatively, expecting him to be freezing. Of course, he’s not. Logan’s skin radiates warmth, always, like a sun.

 

“Wanna tell me what that was about?” Logan says around his cigar. He doesn’t sound mad, so I do.

 

“I just realized I’ve been sleeping with Scott for _six years_ ,” I tell him, and I guess the honesty catches him off-guard, because he guffaws with laughter, takes his cigar out, looks at me in disbelief—when he sees the grin spreading on my face, a smile of pure delight crosses his face, and, for the first time, I see what Logan must have looked like when he was truly young. We sit there, two wet naked animals by the shore of a pond, and the sound of our laughter fills the night like fireflies.


End file.
